~ Additive Manufacturing and Technology

Robo R2 – the big brother to the C2

Last week the box with my R2 came after a long 6 month wait from pre-order. And I was not disappointed, but for one weird thing. First, it is quite a massive machine, larger than an Ultimaker 2. The 5″ touchscreen is half the front lower panel. There is a front door with a magnetic latch, unlike the C2 which has no door at all. Mechanically the R2 shares the general design layout and setup of the C2, but there are some differences. For one, there is a webcam installed on the left inner panel (looking from the front of the unit). And the heated build plate is magnetically attached but leveling screws are present which must be manually adjusted, though there is a guided process from the menu.

Unpacking was routine, and the dreaded inner door scratches people reported in early shipments were not present because there was a nice piece of plastic film protecting it.

As I completed unpacking it, I noticed that at the top of the Z screw a bearing was missing. I checked the packaging for it and could not find it. To be sure, I even searched in the electronics compartment. Thankfully this is just a press-in-place 608 skate bearing and I happen to have plenty of those around of good quality. Its purpose is to fix the end of the Z screw so it will not wobble. If you read my review of the C2 you will recall that I discovered the same bearing there to be dislodged after several hours of use.

Powering it up and after connecting to my WiFi it reported a firmware update was available so I immediately did that and waited for the process to complete. I then did the bed level adjustment and the Z height offset. Eager to get it going, I loaded the blue PLA filament it came with and started printing. And remarkably, everything worked as it should have!

So straight out of the box, plus one firmware update and it worked perfectly. I’ll get some close up pictures of the machine itself as well as some prints to show you how it does, but the default settings in Cura for PLA give fantastic results.

UPDATE

So now that it is several months later, how did it go? The main thing was as I started making new prints it became obvious that the Z screw had been bent in shipping or perhaps even at the factory. Long story short, Robo3D replaced the Z screw fairly quickly once I put a ticket in for warranty issues…. initially wanting me to sent it back (quite a chore) or as I suggested, just send me the part and I’ll return the dud if necessary. Well, not necessary to return it so I got it in 2 weeks and replaced it in about 1 hour’s work. Did that get things fixed? Yes, the Z banding disappeared! And it has continued to be a reliable machine though for the moment it is offline for the time being… other machines being evaluated and so forth – details to follow!